Harold Agnew Carrying the Core of the Nagasaki Fat Man Bomb Colorized

A somewhat odd photo and not terribly exciting unless you are aware of the details. Harold Agnew smiles as he holds the plutonium core to an atomic bomb that would eventually kill 40,000 people outright when it was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki in 1945. The “Fat Man” was the code name given for the atomic bomb that was intended to be dropped on the city of Kokura, but there was too much smoke and fire from a american raid done the previous day, or so we thought until recently.

Japanese steel workers recently revealed that that they saved their city of Kokura from a nuclear bombing by burning coal tar to block view of US planes. This story was kept secret for 69 years out of respect for Nagasaki victims, who were bombed instead. The article was posted on reddit (where I first ran across it) and a user named “Smoovestone” revealed that his father was a Kokura POW at the time and was working at the steel mill where the smoke and fire originated. Long story short, he would not exist had the man not burnt coal and tar to create the smokescreen(cue twilight zone music).

The full size black and white photo is below as well as my colorized version. Feel free to share this post on your social network of choice or leave any comments or questions in the comment section below.

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All photo colorization found within Metacolor is completed by hand using a Wacom Graphic Tablet and Adobe Photoshop CC software. All website design, writing and photo colorization/restoration found within Metacolor.org is the sole work of Wayne Degan.